Paradigm shift. … Fifty years ago, last month, a short book with less than 200 pages was published to eventually become one of the most influential of the twentieth century. Aside from introducing the concept of paradigm shift, which is now widely used and probably abused, Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” has significantly changed the way we look at how science is being developed. And then some.

Kuhn introduced the idea that scientific discoveries are not cumulative and they do not get us closer to an absolute, universal truth. What is rather happening, according to him, is that scientists, as a collective, go through periods of time, defined by distinct underlying perspectives — paradigms. A paradigm constitutes the foundation for all scientific activity during such period of time, and it typically competes with the previous and the subsequent ones. In…